TPM Reader GJ recalls contacting Maurice Sendak about using Where The Wild Things Are images in his high school’s yearbook:
I think your question regarding the generation gap concerning the familiarity of Maurice Sendak confuses two issues: familiarity with the man and familiarity with his work.
I was born in the late 1970s. I most certainly read Where the Wild Things Are as a child. Not only that, while in high school (in the 1990s), our yearbook committee decided to go with a Where the Wild Things Are theme. The yearbook staff wrote to Mr. Sendak to ask him if it was ok to use the book’s imagery. Rather than sending a simple yes or no response back, he mailed the school a set of entirely new and original drawings just for our yearbook! It was amazing.
Yet, when I saw the headlines of the death of Mr. Sendak, my first thought was “who?” It’s not that I was unfamiliar with his work…just the opposite. It’s just that, for whatever reason, his name never stuck in his head (unlike Shel Silverstein, Roald Dahl, etc.)
I don’t know why that is. I guess some people have more memorable names than others. It’s kinda like that guy who’s in all those movies. You know who I’m talking about. You’d totally recognize him if you saw him. He was in that movie where he played a crime boss and that other movie with Tom Cruise. He’s really good!
